Get Email Updates

The Dispatch E-Edition

All current subscribers have full access to Digital D, which includes the E-Edition and
unlimited premium content on Dispatch.com, BuckeyeXtra.com, BlueJacketsXtra.com and
DispatchPolitics.com.
Subscribe
today!

By Dan WilliamsReuters • Sunday December 2, 2012 7:13 AM

Britain and France yesterday condemned a plan by Israel to expand settlements in the occupied
West Bank and East Jerusalem, saying international confidence in its desire to make peace with the
Palestinians is at risk.

Stung by a U.N. vote according de-facto recognition to a Palestinian state, Israel said on
Friday it will build thousands of settler homes, including in a wedge zone between Jerusalem and
the West Bank, known as E1, which Washington considers especially sensitive.

The United States, one of eight countries to vote alongside Israel against the Palestinians in
the U.N. General Assembly, said the latest expansion plan is counterproductive to any resumption of
direct peace talks stalled for two years.

France, which voted with the Palestinians, and Britain, which abstained, had tougher censure for
Israel, which wants to keep all of Jerusalem and many West Bank settlements under any future peace
accord.Most powers view the settlements as illegal for taking in land captured in the 1967 Middle
East war.

“If implemented, these plans would alter the situation on the ground on a scale that makes the
two-state solution, with Jerusalem as a shared capital, increasingly difficult to achieve,” British
Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement.

“They would undermine Israel’s international reputation and create doubts about its stated
commitment to achieving peace with the Palestinians.”

Hague’s French counterpart, Laurent Fabius, spoke of E1 as “the new colonization zone” and said
the Israeli expansion plan could “drain the confidence needed for a return to dialogue.”

“I call upon the Israeli authorities to abstain from any decision in this direction and to
manifest clearly their desire to restart negotiations,” Fabius said.

Israel said that Thursday’s upgrade of the Palestinians’ status at the United Nations to “
nonmember state” from “entity” could allow the Palestinians to sidestep disputes such as
territorial demarcation that should be addressed in negotiations.

The Israelis were further incensed by what they deemed an inflammatory U.N. speech by
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and they said the upgrade resolution neglected the Jewish
state’s security and need for its own sovereignty to be recognized.

Abbas also claims Palestinian sovereignty in Gaza, but the coastal strip is ruled by rival Hamas
Islamists who are deeply hostile to the Jewish state and fought an eight-day war against Israel
last month.

The Israeli settlement plan was disclosed to the media by officials in Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s conservative government who spoke on condition of anonymity, a reticence suggesting the
expansion had not been formally finalized.